Your humble eXiled Online correspondent Mark Ames was invited onto Dylan Ratigan’s “Morning Meeting” show this week to talk about the corporate communists who are dragging America down into the Second World trash heap. Ratigan was recently awarded an honorary eXiled “Iron X” medal for his recent takedown of one of the most toxic of all the corporate communists, Betsy McCaughey, “the woman who killed health care.” This is something we’ve been waiting a long time for: a TV personality who brawls, rather than just more smirking.

34 Comments

I’m warming up to Ratigan, he seems to understand why free market capitalism is bad. Still though, I don’t know why GE isn’t trying to kick him off the show seeing as how GE benefits from the current economic model the US has. Getting people riled up to oppose the system MSNBC’s owners in GE profit from seems like suicide. Maybe I just don’t know enough about what GE’s agenda is concerning using talk show hosts in information warfare, or maybe Ratigan’s too valuable to drop. Or something, i don’t know.

2. Warren Moon | October 9th, 2009 at 7:51 am

“. . .a couple of the most notable parasites. . .”

Fucking awesome. It’s hard to believe “they” let these guys on TV.

3. Homer Erotic | October 9th, 2009 at 8:10 am

a TV personality who brawls, rather than just more smirking.

Hrmm, Ratigan sounds rather like an Irish name. Being of Irish descent myself, I suspect it’s not a coincidence! 😀

4. Pimpycakes | October 9th, 2009 at 9:22 am

There’s no such thing as corporate communism. It’s a bullshit talking point. The term you’re looking for is fascism. Taking money from the public coffers and doling it out to the corporate elite is good old fashioned Italian fascism. No need to invent a new buzzword.

5. Brad | October 9th, 2009 at 9:49 am

FUCK! At the rate things are going maybe I should just learn Cantonese and move to China, at least those people know how to actually run an economy….

6. jps3 | October 9th, 2009 at 10:21 am

corporate communism is better terminology than fascism, because fascists LIKE to be called fascists. it makes them feel strong and manly. calling them corporate commie pinko fags bothers them more. it sounds weaker.

7. Iok Sotot, Eater of Souls | October 9th, 2009 at 11:35 am

Well done Mark! I hope this meme proves catchy. Just one thing dood. Those turquoise eyes of yours, with flecks of chestnut! Yowza!

“Corporate communism” is just good rhetoric aimed at an American audience, where “communism” is just used as a synonym for “bad”. As jps aid, “Fascism” doesn’t carry the same weight. To the American right that might also mean “misunderstood” or at least wrongly accused.

Ratigan is doing the classic American-lefty dance of trying to outflank the Right on the Right. To expose their hypocrisy or something, as though they would care. In reality, the plutocracy are always happy to talk up free-markets and competition, moral hazard, and all that nice stuff, when it’s to their advantage — and they’re happy you’ve helped them. But when it’s not, they have no compunction about looting the treasury and fostering government corruption and cronyism. They never will hesitate.

The monster eats profits, not ideological niceties.

11. Quadrillion Dollar Man | October 9th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

Using communism or fascism to describe the current political system in the western world does not provide any meaning as these terms are from the 19th and 20th century respectively. To understand what is happening, you have to go back much further back then this to the 18th and 17th centuries when there were no “isms”.

What it is is nothing more complex than a caste controlling the political system to loot and exploit the weak. It isn’t a war by capital on labor, or a war by the party on the people, it is a war on both capital and labor, and both party and people.

Corporate executives are swapping in and out of government regulatory jobs while they loot companies in bonuses while destroying their industrial base, then exploit the labor force they no longer need (because they have trashed the company) just for the fun of it.

It is serfdom of everyone to the ruling caste. Because it is not a conflict of the 19th or 20th century, it does not have a 19th or 20th century solution to it. It has an old fashioned, French or American revolution-style solution. Get rid of the government, start over.

“corporate communism” is a good-looking catch-phrase to employ when trying to relate to ordinary americans. the conservos spent decades cultivating the term and it is effectively usurped by ames et al to describe the fascist mechanisms currently underpinning america these last 10,000 days.

14. Dr. Luny | October 9th, 2009 at 4:09 pm

I too am surprised that they allow the truth on television, perhaps MSNBC’s minders have given them a little too much license as the “far-left” element of the mainstream media. Ames is exactly right, the political system has been so thoroughly corrupted that powerful private interests are using influence in government to carve out vast economic rents at the expense of the productive economy. From a classical economic perspective, profits are only possible due to distortion in competitive markets, the kind of gross distortion that occurs when the monopolistic industries manipulate government policy to shape their markets to siphon off as many resources as possible. It’s just plain shitty governance.

15. az | October 9th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

See, this is also what fucks him over. As soon as he questions people on those grounds, they say “Well aren’t you for public option? What about the govt takeovers of GM and stuff?” just like that ball-licking Republican said to him that time. Therefore, you can either accept the bullshit pushed on you like he does and eventually realize that only by being a complete libertarian idealist can you avoid being called a hypocrite, or you can just point out the bullshit and run with it. Though I guess in Ratigan’s case that would end his show rather quickly.

16. internal exile | October 9th, 2009 at 8:21 pm

No “isms” in the 17th century?

Mercantilism on Wikipedia:

Mercantilism was the dominant school of thought throughout the early modern period (from the 16th to the 18th century). Domestically, this led to some of the first instances of significant government intervention and control over the economy,

17. Quadrillion Dollar Man | October 9th, 2009 at 8:58 pm

I won’t be bothered to give idiots a lesson in etymology. It will suffice to quote from Wikipedia:

“Most of the European economists who wrote between 1500 and 1750 are today generally considered mercantilists; this term was initially used solely by critics, such as Mirabeau and Smith, but was quickly adopted by historians. Originally the standard English term was “mercantile system”. The word “mercantilism” was introduced into English from German in the early 19th century.”

18. rossiya | October 9th, 2009 at 11:13 pm

internal exile: Yes, you hit it. Corporatism is right-wing fascism. Communism is left-wing fascism, or socialism+fascism. What we have today is merchantilism. Now the merchantilist threat is no longer foreign nations, but the lower classes. Today the Vatican holds 60% of the gold, the Rothschilds trade this real consideration with bluebloods while raining monopoly money upon the proletariat. It’s a grand pyramid and the bottom rung won’t have a proverbial pot to piss in. The Black Pope claims religious authority, extends secular authority by morally authenticating aristocracy and monarchy, and exerts temporal power through dialectics of war, brokering both sides. Communism is secular Catholicism and we will soon see the fall of Adam Smith’s free market in favor of preplanned common markets like China, the EU and NAU.

19. lawrence | October 10th, 2009 at 12:52 am

I shouldn’t comment here because it says something weird about who i really am.

20. mug | October 10th, 2009 at 4:29 am

First the right uses ‘fascist’ as a pejorative and now the left uses ‘communist’. I love it.

21. james | October 10th, 2009 at 10:17 am

To quote Nietzsche, I am a twerp.

22. Flatulissimo | October 10th, 2009 at 4:02 pm

Other, more accurate terms may exist, but emotionally “Corporate Communism” is going to pack a bigger punch with the average joe, so it gets my vote.

23. thuggin | October 10th, 2009 at 8:43 pm

corporate communism? is that they best they could have thought? and why put the hammer and sickle on the “O” and not flip it for the “C” … and don’t try and say msnbc viewers would notice the difference.

Americans make me laugh when they start throwing around terms they have NO idea

25. Ilona | October 11th, 2009 at 11:02 am

Yeah, yeah…

Give the good, old protectionism a fancy(?), oldish name…

It’s the same good old, same old… No matter who’s money is spent…

And what do you think whose’s money is spent?

Sad song.

26. TomTom | October 11th, 2009 at 6:57 pm

I’m not sure Mark, surely you’re more intelligent to join in the average bolshie-bashing media mass? To me it discredits your journalism when you’re so prepared to just throw stock words around for the amusement of shock jockeys.

27. LIExpressway | October 14th, 2009 at 12:48 pm

The evil Corporations are not fascist. Fascism has nothing to do with economics whereas communism and capitalism are solely concerned with it. The Tea Party’s, WN’s ,KKK, and Militias are better examples of Fascism. Bush and Cheney are not Fascist by the way.

Fascism “is a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion” – according to Paxton

I’d say that’s quite a smart appropriation of a word that’s been demonised by the American political mainstream for the last 100 years.

It’s using their own terminology against them as a weapon.

Yeah, so you can claim that it’s merely bandying around a new buzz word, but it does actually refer to a fairly specific set of circumstances that are taking place right now, and it’s not at all a bad term to describe those circumstances.

29. aleke | October 17th, 2009 at 3:48 pm

hahahahh “Communism is Socialism+Fascism” hahahhahahhahhahhhah

30. chugs | October 19th, 2009 at 12:48 pm

it seemed a bit weak to be frank.

you need to tell us what laws and changes were made to benefit those companies, what actions they took to create those changes.

31. Richard Sievert | October 20th, 2009 at 6:11 am

Quadrillion Dollar Man Is right I replied to a comment on msnbc last night and a server came on and publicly took my reply out because i am a complete fucking idiot and don’t have anything interesting to say but i think i do. if only more sites censored idiots like me this world would be a better place

32. Richard Sievert | October 20th, 2009 at 6:15 am

And I am not ever going back there so please Keep this sight opened and to the public for witch it stands one nation under god indivisible yadeeyadeeyada actually i will admit it i am a traitor and a hippie fag i wish my country to be destroyed and occupied by peruvian flute-players

this comment i am trying to post now is stupid as fuk!??there is no such thig as the tooth fairy and yet my mommy keeps putting quarters under my pillow and what i think is that this is the invisible hand of adam smith.what their (if you’re retarded like me you write “their” instead of “they’re”) talking about is pure capatilism, whereas what i worship is pure retardation. if i want to know what communism is i let my mommy read the fukin bookz to me at night although non retards you can read any book you want 4 yourself. i wish i could fuk these two things that hang in my scrotum bags….power to the retarded commenters. why argue when you can post comments in lower-case…

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